It's All About Kate
Illawarra Mercury
Thursday September 18, 2003
Something For Kate's Paul Dempsey has a little post-album ritual - he torches all his song notebooks.
Dempsey fills notebooks with songs, ideas and phrases in the lead-up to each album. Once it's been recorded, he turns them to ashes.
``I've used the fireplace before and I've used a barbeque before," Dempsey says.
``It's also kind of a good excuse to go camping. I take myself off somewhere, start a fire and sit around throwing books on the fire all night."
Burning them is crucial to the Dempsey ritual - merely flinging them in the garbage bin at home wouldn't suffice.
``It's the irrational fear that someone at the local tip is going to see an open page and have a read of them," he says.
``I just need to feel that they're gone, gone, gone."
He sees the notebook-burning as a way of ``cleaning the slate" allowing him to start afresh.
He's not worried that he might be burning some good stuff - the way he sees it, if there were any great ideas, they'd have ended up on the album.
``Also, if there's any good stuff in there, it will stay in my memory," he says.
``Often I think of some things and I think `oh, I really like that' then, an hour later I've forgotten it. If I've forgotten it, it can't have been that good."
As for setting things on fire, you might think he'd like to do that to the occasional negative review the new album The Official Fiction has attracted.
But he says they don't affect him that much.
``I'd be lying if I said I didn't read them," he says.
``I don't make a point of searching them out but you can't always avoid them. You look in the street press to see that the ad you paid for has gone in and you come across a review. More often than not I'll read them.
``Generally, whether they're good, bad or otherwise, I'm struck by the simple fact that it's one person's opinion and how the hell did they get it in print?
``Wouldn't it be great if everybody got to print their personal opinion on something?"
The negative reviews don't bother Dempsey and the other band members because they try to make an album they're happy with. If anyone else likes it, that's a bonus.
``When it actually hits the stores, it's a lottery," he says.
``It's anybody's guess whether it will go up or down or whatever. You just don't know. There's no point in keeping yourself awake at night worrying about it.
``If it came out and it was a complete and total failure, it doesn't change the fact that you loved it when you made it.
``You finish making a record and, typically, there's a three or four month lag before it hits the stores. In that three or four months before anyone else has even heard it, that's where you have to be able to sit down and say, `whatever happens, this is the best record we've ever made'."
This focus even goes to the extent of trying to please themselves above their fans. They have the belief that the fans will follow the band down whatever musical road they choose to take.
``I think what they wouldn't like is if they felt we were trying to impress them or if they thought we were trying to please a certain audience," he says.
``My attitude is that we have to do this to make ourselves happy, to give ourselves satisfaction and a buzz from writing music.
``If we're not trying to make ourselves happy, we're trying to make everyone else happy and I just don't believe that can be done. I don't think you can sit down and consciously write songs to please everybody."
Something For Kate perform at the University of Wollongong tonight.
© 2003 Illawarra Mercury